Meta, the owner of CrowdTangle, a digital tool used to track and combat viral falsehoods online, has shut down the tool and replaced it with its new Content Library. Meta claims that the new tool will serve the same purpose and be more user-friendly. However, long-time users of CrowdTangle, including researchers and journalists, are skeptical of this claim. They are concerned about the closure of CrowdTangle at a time when misinformation on social media is rampant, especially leading up to the US presidential election in November. The closure of CrowdTangle raises questions about Meta’s motives and how it will impact the fight against misinformation and disinformation online.
CrowdTangle was founded in 2011 and quickly gained popularity among media outlets for tracking and analyzing trending topics and articles on social media platforms. Facebook (then known as Meta) acquired the company five years later. CrowdTangle was a powerful tool for researchers studying misinformation and disinformation as it allowed them to download large datasets for analysis and easily search for data using keywords. It also enabled the automatic analysis of trends in large data collections from multiple sources. Journalists also relied on CrowdTangle to expose the influence of far-right accounts and monitor the spread of disinformation during events like the COVID pandemic and race riots in the UK.
The closure of CrowdTangle by Meta raises questions about their motives. It is unsurprising that Meta would question funding a largely free service that exposed some of their failings. However, the closure is also part of Meta’s broader withdrawal from the news business, which started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016. Meta’s policies aimed at reducing exposure to news content across its platforms demonstrate their withdrawal from the news business. While this redirection may be commercially motivated, it is also driven by the particular news and information that spreads on Meta’s platforms, which has attracted scrutiny from regulators and threatens their operations in key markets.
Meta has replaced CrowdTangle with its Content Library, which they claim provides researchers with access to more publicly-available content across Facebook and Instagram. However, the new tool has major limitations, including reduced functionality, an inability to export data, and limited access to posts from public figures without a large number of followers. This will greatly hinder research efforts. The biggest issue with Meta’s new Content Library is that it will not be freely available to journalists and newsrooms. This reduced access has implications for election integrity, political disinformation, and online harassment prevention efforts. Meta’s decision to be selective about which data it makes transparent raises concerns about their commitment to transparency and accountability.
